The president of the Bahamas, who would replace Queen Elizabeth II as the nation’s head of state if the Bahamas Constitutional Review Commission gets its way, would be an extremely powerful individual.
Among the duties assigned to this president of the Bahamas would be the appointment of the chief justice and the president of the Bahamas Court of Appeal, and the appointment of justices of the Supreme Court.
This power of appointment would give the president the power to determine the course of Bahamian jurisprudence, or the legal philosophy that guides the decision-making process for the courts.
On another front, the Commission recommends the formation of “a truly independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.” One way this independence would be achieved would be to “remove the power of the prime minister to modify the report of the (Electoral and Boundaries) Commission.”
The prime minister’s powers of appointments would also be lessened if the Commission’s suggestions were followed.
The Commission notes the power of the prime minister to appoint “many senior persons, including senior judicial officers (Court of Appeal, chief justice), chairmen of most of the permanent commissions, foreign representatives, permanent secretaries, commissioner and deputy commissioner of police, etc.”
However, the only specific recommendation for removing any of the prime minister’s powers is the suggested relegation of the power of appointment of senior judicial officers to the president, as head of state.
The Commission recommends that persons attacked in the House of Assembly be allowed to respond in writing, and have their response published in the Hansard. The Speaker of the House would have final approval of the written response, “to prevent baseless or frivolous responses,” according to the Commission.
The Commission proposes reform to the Judicial and Legal Services Commission, allowing for non-practicing attorneys to be appointed to that commission by the president.
The president would also appoint members to the “parliamentary committees” the commission proposes. These committees would have oversight of areas of Cabinet ministers’ responsibility, and would allow for expertise from the private sector to be of use in the public administration of ministerial duties.
And five of the 23 senators the Commission proposes would be appointed by the president, “at his own discretion,” from various sectors of the society.
In each case throughout the report that the proposed president of the Bahamas would exercise ‘his’ considerable powers, those powers are only exercised after “consultation” with either the prime minister, the leader of the Opposition or some other second party.
However, in each case, the final decision would reside with the president of the Bahamas.
The Commission, headed by former Attorney General Paul L. Adderley and Harvey Tynes, Q.C., suggests that “The Bahamas should be a democratic parliamentary republic with the head of state being the president-“
For the Bahamas to become a parliamentary republic would mean severing all ties with Britain and the Commonwealth.
And in fact, the commission proposes that the British legislation granting the Bahamas independence – the Order-In-Council (Bahamas Independence Order) – be repealed. This order would be replaced simultaneously with a purely Bahamian Act called the Bahamas Constitution Act.
The Commission suggests that a nation can be considered sovereign only when it is “an independent legal entity, where some supreme body has virtually unlimited capacity to make laws.”
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
